The Replacement Child - By Christine Barber Page 0,36
of gasoline and plastic. Its rooms were cluttered with old bunker gear and handheld radios stripped of their parts.
She and Gerald got into the ambulance, where Gerald proceeded to show her where the medical equipment was kept. In theory, she was supposed to know how to use it all, but in actuality, she had very little idea. For most of the week-long first-responder class she had paid little attention—she’d been too busy drooling over Gerald or not crying over Del.
She and Gerald hopped out of the ambulance and headed over to the fire engine, where Gerald opened a compartment filled with axes, saws, and what looked like really painful sex toys.
She tried to concentrate as Gerald talked. She liked the idea of being a volunteer medic, but somehow she couldn’t see herself doing it. Honestly, she wasn’t really the selfless type. Just being at the station made her feel inadequate. All the other volunteers had other jobs but were firefighters or EMTs in their spare time. Hell, she couldn’t even manage to take a Spanish class in her spare time; these people went out and saved lives on their way home from the grocery store. The worst part was, they did it for free, out of the goodness of their hearts. It intimidated Lucy. She felt like she had no right to walk among these gods. Was that a line from a poem or was she getting high off the fire engine’s diesel fumes?
Gerald was explaining how a halogen bar worked when his pager went off, making Lucy jump.
He turned up the volume on the pager as a dispatcher said, “Piñon; Highway 102, MVA; vehicle versus semi.”
“Want to go on a call?” he asked.
Lucy nodded and smiled, not sure what else to do. They got into the ambulance as Gerald said into the radio, “Dispatch, Piñon Medic One responding; one paramedic, one first responder onboard.”
She listened to the radio as other Piñon volunteers came up. She had been on a total of only three calls in the six months she had been with Piñon, including one other car accident. It had been a little fender-bender and all five patients hadn’t needed to go to the hospital. She had tried to take one patient’s blood pressure—something she had supposedly learned how to do in class—but couldn’t find the pulse at the brachial artery in the crook of the arm. A brisk EMT from another department gave her a scathing look and did it instead. That was the last call she had run, almost two months ago. She had her own pager like Gerald’s, but it was in the glove compartment of her car under old Taco Bell napkins and a burned-out flashlight.
Gerald took a turn too fast and Lucy braced herself against the door. A minute later, he pulled the ambulance up to the scene. Two cars pulled up behind them, the other firefighters coming POV. When Lucy first joined the fire department, she’d had no clue that POV stood for Privately Owned Vehicle. At first she’d thought it referred to some complicated firefighting device. Positive Oxygen Ventilation. Partially Obscure Velocity. Gerald had set her straight without laughing.
In the middle of an intersection sat a semi-trailer and an old Honda Civic. Or at least it looked like a Civic. Lucy was bad with cars, plus this one was barely recognizable as a car.
She saw the driver of the semi gesturing wildly as he talked to a deputy. The man looked unhurt.
As Lucy hopped out of the ambulance, Gerald told her to put on two sets of latex gloves. She had no idea why, but she didn’t question him. Gerald handed her the oxygen bag and the medical pack from the ambulance. As she followed close behind Gerald, she silently reminded herself to keep her mouth shut and just listen, something she’d never been good at.
The front of the semi was slightly dented, but the entire driver’s side of the Civic was crushed in more than two feet. The car had been spun around by the impact of the crash. A sheriff’s deputy was directing traffic away from the scene. Broken glass and plastic crunched under her feet, and somewhere in the distance she heard more sirens.
Gerald got into the passenger seat of the Civic and motioned her into the backseat. She climbed in with a sheriff’s deputy who was trying to keep the driver—a man in his forties—talking. Lucy glanced at the damage to the car’s interior. The metal from the